Thug Life

It’s bad enough that that hideous little creep Tom Davis (R-jackboot) drops a horsehead in major league baseball’s bed saying that it shouldn’t give the DC franchise to an investment group that includes George Soros. The real insult is that he does it so openly to tilt the field to the president’s friend, fundraiser and former business partner in the Texas Rangers, Fred “count the Jews” Malek.

I know that it does no good to bring up Clinton rules and wonder what the allegedly responsible press would have made of such a thing if it had happened in 1993. We know that it would have been turned into a non-stop feeding frenzy with blond former prosecutors and strange looking Republican men with comb-overs dolefully wringing their hands night after night on Matthews as they bemoaned the corruption of mom, apple pie and Murika’s pastime by Bill and his corrupt hillbilly friends.

But you would think that a Republican congressman (with the clout to haul all the MLB owners in front of his kangaroo steroid committee again and ream them out for another 8 hours) publicly strong-arming them with threats to lift their anti-trust exemption and clearly indicating that he’d prefer they picked a Nixon stooge and Bush pal, would cause a little ripple. The only place I’ve seen any speculation about this is in the WaPo sports section:

You can’t help wondering what’s behind the outrageous attack on Soros, who isn’t even a major partner in the bid for the Nats. (Local entrepreneur Jon Ledecky is the real bidder.) Isn’t it strange that rival bidder Fred Malek, the head of the Washington Baseball club, just happens to be a very big GOP fundraiser? And isn’t it strange that, in a telephone interview, Davis went out of his way to praise Malek’s bid? And isn’t it strange that these attacks on Soros from Republicans came on the very day that Ledecky and his partners were being interviewed by MLB?

Forget Soros (although the irony is so thick you can slice it, considering the “jeweyness” of the whole thing.) Malek is the story. I know that the press thinks this Iraq thing and the whole Bush lying and incompetence thing is so, like, 2004. But can’t they even get it up to complain about baseball being threatened by Republican thugs? Not even that?

Now that I think about it, I’ve long noticed that sportwriters are among the last real journalists around. Whenever politics and sports converge they are the first ones who get to the essence of the story. Costas was tough last night on Larry King. Olbermann is always good. Since the political writers love the horse race stories so much maybe the major dailies should just have them switch places with the sports staff. It could be the answer to everybody’s problems.

Update: Jesse has more on Malek. And I see that TAPPED tilled this soil yesterday.

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